AP settles copyright claim with Drudge Retort, “guidelines” for bloggers forthcoming

hotair.com ^ | June 20, 2008 | by Allahpundit

[Jim Robinson]

No money changed hands but Rogers Cadenhead, who owns the Retort, evidently agreed to tweak the offending posts to bring them into compliance with the AP’s guidelines. And what might those guidelines be? He’s not saying. Yet.

I spent around two hours yesterday talking to AP attorneys about their specific objections to the user blog entries in dispute, going line by line through the text to pinpoint exactly where they have intellectual property concerns in the short excerpts that were posted. I won’t reveal the details of this discussion until AP releases the guidelines for bloggers that it promised on Monday…

If AP’s guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we’re headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use…

Although AP will be releasing guidelines, I don’t think the news service will be able to concede any ground to the blogosphere. AP sells headline and lead-only services to customers. Asking the company to concede there’s a way people can share this information for free is like asking the RIAA to pick its favorite file-sharing client.

The post on the settlement at the Media Bloggers Association corroborates that the AP drew the line at excerpting the headline and the lede paragraph, since “a large percentage of the value of what they deliver is carefully packaged in that content and so the publishing of that information without permission was a copyright violation.” If that’s the main guideline, plus whatever reasonable excerpt length they suggest (two or three paragraphs?), it won’t be terribly burdensome for bloggers, but like Cadenhead suggests, they’re going to end up in court anyway thanks to the thousands of user-driven bulletin board news-sharing sites online. AP headlines and ledes are probably copied verbatim a few dozen times a day at Free Republic and Democratic Underground alone. Add in Digg, Reddit, etc etc etc, and you’re looking at a galaxy of lawsuit opportunities. Exit question: Which lucky website will find itself the bearer of the golden ticket to federal district court?

[CutePuppy]

Actually that falls under Fair Use, but there is even a question of copyright issue itself, if AP only cares about headlines - actually, that may be a "semi-graceful" way for them to back out, or come up with some way of saving face, like asking for placing "AP: " before their headline (of course, that may have to specifically exempt their distributors / affiliates from that minor particular requirement.)

AP is essentially trying to double-dip here, not "protect" their "copyright" for non-unique news. What this "action" really amounts to is forcible "conversion" / treatment of end users (i.e. consumers) of news which have never directly paid to AP or for attributed content, even when in its printed form, into "affiliates" / distributors of AP, just by fiat of their saying so, and "new guidelines", which they are going to make up as they go.

That's exactly why they chose as a target a weak player with a similarity to BIG name (drudgereTort.com), not someone like Matt Drudge of DRUDGEREPORT.com because he would simply tell them to go and "digitize" themselves, just like KoS is doing. I seriously doubt that they want to try any aspect of this sham (whether it's copyright, "misappropriation", "hot news" etc.) in courts in hopes of winning a "lottery", since there can be no remedial damages, it doesn't help their business one bit and it can only hurt their reputation and business IF they "win". What they try to do instead is make an "agreement" with a weak hand in [what they think is] the "industry" and set it as the "precedent" to announce and for others to follow. Would you believe? The old "precedent" trick.

Not only any copyright or media lawyer is going to have great fun picking them apart in court on their claims, but they lose any claims of being THE "news" organization just like nobody (including her editors) thinks of NYT as the "newspaper of record" - nothing to win materially, everything to lose. Even unlikely "winning" in court would be a Pyrrhic victory for them with cost in bad publicity and ill will from their own distributors and inevitable loss of business.

[Smokin' Joe]

“everyone knows”

Dangerous stuff, that, especially with an agenda attached to it.

There are two sides to every story (at a minimum).

I agree, in the case of a potentially controversial issue, using one side's press release without further footwork is lazy and does a great disservice to not only the issue, but to the other parties in opposition, and the readership as well.

That is precisely the sort of "reporting" which has made TV and the dinosaur media a lousy reputation, even when it is not an intentional attempt to distort or fabricate a story.

[HAL9000]

The AP’s focus is profit, and keeping their clients happy.

The Associated Press is a not-for-profit cooperative. The impetus for the new AP new policy is probably the member newspapers, which are concerned about profits as their circulations decline.

[omega4179]

.

[goosie]

Cadenhead said in his article:

My attorney Wade Duchene and I were already working up the victory speech to deliver on the steps of the Supreme Court in the landmark First Amendment decision AP v. Me (Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, Kennedy, Lessig, Tribe and CLINTON concurring).

Did you pick up the CLINTON reference?

[Grampa Dave]

BOL, you bitter old white guy!:)

Doesn’t make me a bad person - - LOL!

Good Lord, I hope not. If it does, that makes me a bad PaPa.

[Gondring]

The AP is a collective designed in part to give exclusive sharing rights between its member papers. Additionally, AP sells information as an entity.

[TribalPrincess2U]

fair use? They don’t know what fair use is!
Another socialist idea to ride herd over the people.

[Joya]

Bumping post #12, boycotting AP.

FReepspeech!
~~~Joya

[rb22982]

It’s not like we’ll miss their (AP) ‘stories’ anyway. It’s time for that dinosaur to die IMO. God bless you and all the other freedom minded internet sites out there.

[Mark Felton]

--"They are working against the economic interest of their customers and themselves and do not have enough knowledge of the internet to see it.

I know, it's unfathomable they don't see this?

yeah, sure, they are dumb. They dominate the news media, and have helped lead the conquest of the US culture, and government over past 50 years. They are dumb. We post blogs and bitch. We are smart.

These AP folks know far more about the internet, its economics and the impact to their business than you or 99.999% of people using the internet.

It never ceases to amaze me how conservative talk show hosts like Hannity and others run around talking about how stooopid the liberals are, how stoopid the politicians are and how only conservatives are smart...

liberal leader idiots, such as those who control the AP, have helped destroy American conservatives and turned this nation into a quivering gob of intellectual and moral goo.

These liberal idiots have taken 100% control of the US government (yes, 100%).

Liberal idiots have taken control of majority of the Fortune 500 corporations.

Liberal idiots have taken control over the indoctrination of your conservative children using your conservative money to pay them for doing it.

Conservatives cannot even take over a local school board from the NEA liberals! LOL

[sirchtruth]

I'll venture to bet you don't have a friggin CLUE what we are referring too. It has nothing to do with liberal, conservative, it's about the economic impact to AP's customers.

Why do you think Rush Limbaugh has 20M listeners while liberal radio talk shows have three? What audience do you think, can afford and buy more stuff?

We're talking business and economics while your living ten to twenty years ago in the past.

I'll predict if the AP places these absurd values on their over-inflated egotistical product the only people who buy their crap are going to be other liberal DBM outlets which are dying off quicker each day. Trying to regulate fair use and free specch by attaching a value will be the economic bane of their existance.

I will bill you $4.00 for each word you use from my post, plus a "thought shower" fee of $12.35 in which I had to generate to put these ideas together. Italics quotes are a flat $15.99!

Are you buying?

[Mark Felton]

sirchtruth, now I too am an idiot? not just the AP and Dem media?

In that case sirchtruth I better just believe you when you tell us those dumb AP folks “do not have enough knowledge of the internet” to stop from hurting themselves?

I’ll just have to believe you when you say they have an “over-inflated egotistical product” and “the only people who buy their crap are going to be other liberal DBM outlets”?

you’re brilliant sirchtruth. good news. that means soon they will collapse under their own stupidity and the beacons of truth, hope and the American way will pop up magically out of the ground and proclaim everybody to be “Great Americans” while the Dems will don black hats and go skulking off into dark crevices reduced to posting inane crap on internet blog sites.

AP crap sales are down.

How are your sales today sirchtruth?

regards,

Mark

BTW: A man named Sun Tzu lived 2500 years in the past. You could learn a lot about the internet business from him.